The Drunken Sailor
by Miss Scarlet
Summary: A short POV fic about everone's favourite drunkard - Don! He awaits Vyse's return from the Dark Rift, and ponders life and how it all went wrong.


The Drunken Sailor

**The Drunken Sailor**

**By Miss Scarlet**

They say that life always looks much better through the bottom of a bottle of loqua. But they're wrong. Life only looks cloudy and distorted, the uneven surface of my table appearing all the more twisted and old. But perhaps that is what they meant. Perhaps life is so dull and pointless that the only way to make sense of it all is to look at it as a crazed whirl of hatred and desolation. Then again, maybe it's just another meaningless saying, and I'm reading far too much into it. 

I can't stop thinking about that boy. You know the one I mean. Vyse something-or-other. He reminds me so much of me. I wonder if he'll end up like me, then. Drunk and alone in a bar, with only a bottle of loqua for company and a killer headache. 

But somehow, I don't think that'll happen. I don't think anyone else is as pathetic as I am, and I can't wish my miserable fate onto another. I may be hopeless, but I'm not cruel. 

I can't see the Dark Rift through the windows, but I can still feel it. It's there, watching me, laughing at me defiantly. It won, after all. And I lost, only I didn't have the sense to go away and get on with other things. No, I just sat there, drinking myself into oblivion every day hoping for some miracle to turn up and my life to right itself once again. Some people might say that I have to do something if I want to get anywhere – that I have to leap to my feet and recruit a crew and hire a ship and go right back into that big old Dark Rift but hell, that ain't gonna happen. 

The funny thing is, I don't even like loqua. Sure, the first few times you have it it's great, but it's lost all flavour to me. I might as well be drinking water. Now it's just bland and boring, no different to anything else. But there is some security in that. Some safety in knowing that this is what I always drink, and what I'll be drinking on the day I die.

I hate my life.

I hate being stuck in here, knowing that I should do something but lacking the ambition of the feeling to actually go through with it. I want more than anything to be in a ship again, just sailing for the hell of it, the wind in my hair, fish flocking about the bow but it'll never happen. I doubt I'll ever put my hands on a steering wheel again, sail to distant lands in the search of treasure or whatever else. Valua promised that to me, but they didn't deliver. I don't blame them – I'm not worth it. Give me a ship and I'll just go straight into the Dark Rift, without a care for the lives of my crew or even myself. And I would probably die if I went in there again.

I lack the courage to do anything about it, though. I'm too proud for suicide, too stupid to realise that my life is meaningless, and too stubborn to give it all up and leave this desolate excuse for a town. We're all degenerate bastards, each and every one of us, each wallowing in self-pity and our own worthless miserable lives. Esperanza is hell, forget the bottomless pit to the land of the dead; if you want to be truly miserable then come to Esperanza and have a drink at the bar. Give up all hope ye who enter here,' that's what they should write on a big sign and plaster it on those bloody cliffs that always loom above me. That would put a stop to the tourist trade. Hah – not that there is a tourist trade to speak of. No trade at all, really. Just one guy sitting on a rug in the sand, counting out his dwindling money supplies and staring out at the dismal sky about him.

I'm yet to see anyone smile in this town. We have no reason to smile. Oh, no, wait, I'm wrong. I saw old man Blesker smile, before he went insane and killed himself. Our quiet little town drove him over the edge. I hope that doesn't happen to me. But maybe I do. Maybe, deep down, I just want death or insanity, sweet release from this prison of existence.

But I'm not going to kill myself. I'm too proud, and I'm not quite that desperate. Not yet, anyway. If I want death then I'm just going to sit around and wait it out, just like everyone else in this town. It's no life, though, really it isn't. It's closer to hell than anywhere I've ever been is. We live in a hollow metal shell, waiting for our miracle. Only I don't think that the miracle will ever get here.

Footsteps and voices outside. We don't talk much any more. Got nothing to talk about, really. The weather, the Rift It gets boring after a while. That young pirate, Vyse, he was an interesting topic of conversation for a few days. Would he make it through the Dark Rift? But no, he's dead now, lost in that swirling black beast for all eternity. Nobody can get through the Dark Rift, because the Dark Rift doesn't want it. It's alive, in a strange sort of way. It watched us in our little town and smirks, and whenever anyone braves the raging winds it laughs and toys with their lives as if they were as meaningless as as well, it's right. Our lives _are_ meaningless.

Someone's coming in through the door. Could it be?

_Vyse?!_

-

What do you think? Have I just completely butchered Don's character? Heh – probably. Somehow I could never bring myself to like Don (Lawrence was _such_ a better Helmsman) so what do I do? I write about him. Mad. So please writer me a review, although not one saying that Don is better than Lawrence. (He's not! He's not!) Thanks for reading!


End file.
